Eon District Heating
The number one issue in Cranbrook (as voted by you!)
Overview
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a recent poll of Cranbrook Residents the endless issues with the Eon District Heating service came top – everything from service faults and reliability concerns to incorrect billing. This is undeniably one of the biggest issues for Cranbrook and has been since the town’s inception.
From unreliable service and disruption, poor service especially to the vulnerable through to unregulated control of District Heating, Billing Issues and poor Customer Service. It is shocking just how often the service fails, but it is far more concerning that these issues have existed since the town was first started – some people have lived with a decade of terrible, unreliable service and nobody seems to be investigating it deeply enough – too focused on individual incidents and giving Eon plenty of slack, and not enough drilling down into the real problem.
It is no wonder that almost 30% of the of responses I received included Eon as an absolute top issue for them in Cranbrook, and I’ve yet to have a discussion about Cranbrook without the poor state of the Eon Service coming into it!
Long before I decided to stand for the Council, I’d started investigating the Eon District Heating ‘service’. If you were at the January 2023 public meeting you might remember me – I was the guy that stood up and gave Eon a lot of push back on the claims they were making. Since then I have not been idle about it, and I’ve attended other meetings that weren’t open to the public (at the invitation of Eon no less!). I’ve been discussing common ground with other areas with Eon District Heating systems and looking into the legality of some of the things that happen. It needs to be sorted out once and for all – Eon need to start treating customers with respect and not with contempt and nobody has ever tackled them properly – but some of the very organisations investigating Eon played a part in allowing a monopoly to be created for that unrelated service forced on Cranbrook residents, then allowed promises to be made that were never kept. It’s hard to see just how much they can really push Eon when they have some responsibility for the whole fiasco.
I’m committed to getting to the bottom of it, holding Eon properly to account rather than paying lip service to the idea, and want to see them regulated, forced to operate in a reasonable manner and stop ultimately sticking 2 fingers up at the people of Cranbrook.
Got something you want to share or tell me about Eon – go for it – I’m ready for the onslaught.
Update: 8th April 2023:
I’m obviously aware that everyone in Cranbrook is receiving a letter from Eon in the latest instalment of madness claiming they somehow ‘made a mistake’ with the recent price changes. This is an unfortunately timed, but useful example of why there needs to be stronger representation for the community in Cranbrook. Making a change that is retrospectively applied and making references to guarantee schemes which are largely irrelevant them is just another slap in the face. This farce is years old, has cost Cranbrook a fortune, and isn’t any further resolved now than when people first moved in.
